NIKOLAEVO, Bulgaria — The mystery is solved — but the future of the young girl known only as Maria is still uncertain.

DNA tests have confirmed that a Bulgarian Roma couple living in an impoverished village with their nine other children are the biological parents of the girl found in Greece with another Roma couple, authorities said Friday.

Genetic profiles of Sasha Ruseva, 35, and her husband, Atanas, matched that of Maria, Interior Ministry official Svetlozar Lazarov said Friday.

Hellenic Police via Getty ImagesIn this handout photo provided by the Hellenic Police, is a four-year-old girl reportedly named Maria, who was found living with a Roma couple in central Greece, on October 21, 2013 in Athens, Greece.

Ruseva says she gave birth to a baby girl four years ago in Greece while working as an olive picker but gave the child away because she was too poor to care for her. She since has had two more children after Maria.

Maria has been in a charity’s care since authorities raided a Roma settlement in Greece last week and found she was not related to the Greek Roma couple she was living with. Her discovery triggered a global search for her parents, fears of possible child trafficking and interest from authorities dealing with missing children cases in Poland, France, the United States and elsewhere.

Human rights groups have also raised concerns that the news coverage about Maria and the actions taken by authorities were fueling racist sentiment against the European Union’s Gypsy minority, who number around 6 million.

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The Bulgarian prosecutor’s office and Greek authorities were “seeking clarification on whether the mother agreed to sell the child,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The Rusevs and their other children live in a dilapidated, mud-floored house outside the remote Bulgarian village of Nikolaevo, 280 kilometres east of the capital, Sofia.

The Roma, or Gypsy, quarter here houses some 2,000 people. Most here are jobless, living in extreme poverty, trying to stay warm in shabby houses. Children played Friday in mud-covered streets as pigs, cats and hens ambled by.

Minka Ruseva, a 14-year-old who is one of the Rusev family’s children, stood in front of their dilapidated two-room house. Minka said she saw pictures of Maria on TV and thought she was her sister.

“I like her very much, she looks very much like me and I want her back home. We will take care of her and I can help my mother,” she said.

Stoyan Todorov, a neighbour of the Rusevs’, complained of the hardships that he and his family face every day. He said Bulgarian authorities do not care about helping the Roma and come “only on the eve of elections, hoping to get our votes.”

“Look how we are living in total misery,” he continued. “Years ago, a man was murdered in our neighbourhood and nobody paid attention. Now there are crowds of concerned people here because of one girl.”

Nikolay Doychinov / AFP / Getty ImagesTheir home in the Roma district of the central Bulgarian town of Nikolaevo

As he spoke, he pointed at the scores of reporters from across Europe who had descended on the remote area.

“The truth is that we do not have the money to look after our kids,” Todorov said.

Greek officials, fearing that Maria’s 2009 birth record contained false information, have ordered a nationwide check of all Greek birth records in the last six years to ferret out welfare fraud or other irregularities.

The Greek Roma couple, now in pre-trial detention, have been charged with allegedly abducting Maria and committing document fraud. They told authorities they had received Maria after an informal adoption and their lawyer said Friday they planned to seek legal custody of the girl.

Nikolay Doychinov / AFP / Getty ImagesFour of the children of Sasha Ruseva and Atanas Rusev

Under Greek law, child abduction charges can include cases where a minor is voluntarily given away by its parents.

“We are very, very happy with this outcome, because we have proved what we said from the outset …the adoption, as it happened, was not of a legal nature but it was not abduction,” the Greek couple’s lawyer, Costas Katsavos, told the AP.

“Now, as the birth mother has been found, we will ask to gain — through legitimate processes — custody of little Maria, whom the family truly sees as its own child.”

At the Gypsy camp in Farsala, central Greece, where Maria was found, residents said the couple had been vindicated.

“They are saying the woman stole the girl. She didn’t steal her. The Bulgarian gave the child to her … we’ve had Maria here for five years,” neighbour Christina Pavlos told The Associated Press.

There was no word on where Maria herself hoped to live. The Greek charity “Smile of the Child,” which has been looking after her, would not comment on the case.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/25/mother-of-maria-found-dna-test-confirms-bulgarian-roma-woman-gave-birth-to-greek-mystery-girl/feed/0stdSasha Ruseva with one of her children. Bulgarian authorities say DNA tests have confirmed the 35-year-old Roma woman is the mother of a mysterious girl in Greece known as MariaHellenic Police via Getty ImagesNikolay Doychinov / AFP / Getty ImagesNikolay Doychinov / AFP / Getty ImagesBulgarian woman claims Maria is the daughter she left in Greece because she 'had nothing to feed her'http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/24/bulgarian-woman-claims-maria-is-the-daughter-she-left-in-greece-because-she-had-nothing-to-feed-her/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/24/bulgarian-woman-claims-maria-is-the-daughter-she-left-in-greece-because-she-had-nothing-to-feed-her/#commentsThu, 24 Oct 2013 20:22:51 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=380972

The mystery over a young blond girl known only as Maria appeared to have been resolved Thursday after an impoverished Bulgarian woman said she could be her daughter.

Sasha Ruseva, 35, said she had given birth to a girl in Greece “several years ago,” but had to leave her baby behind because she could not afford to take her home.

Maria, who is aged between four and six, was discovered living in a Roma settlement near Farsala, central Greece, last week, with a couple whom DNA tests proved were not her biological relatives.

Authorities launched an international hunt to find her family, receiving more than 8,000 calls from as far afield as Japan, Canada and Sweden.

Thursday the focus turned to the small Bulgarian town of Nikolaevo after reports suggested Ms. Ruseva and her husband Atanas, 37, might be Maria’s real parents. The couple were detained by police and taken to nearby Gurkovo for questioning.

Pictures of their other children show several strongly resemble Maria, with white-blond hair, pale skin and clear eyes.

One of them, Isa Rusev, 15, said his mother had cried, “That’s my daughter!” and burst into tears after seeing photographs of Maria on television.

Hellenic Police via Getty ImagesA four-year-old girl reportedly named Maria, who was found living with a Roma couple in central Greece, on Oct. 21, 2013 in Athens, Greece.

“I cannot say if she is my sister,” he added. “I don’t know how many sisters I have. But my mother cried when she saw the picture.”

After being questioned by authorities, Ms. Ruseva explained she had returned to the family home in Bulgaria after the departure of one of her eldest daughters. She left the child behind as she had no money to look after her.

My mother cried when she saw the picture

“I do not know whether she is mine or not,” she said. “We had a child. We left it in Greece as I had nothing to feed her. I did not take any money.”

She said she would take the child back if DNA tests proved she was the mother.

EPA / Ivan Yanev / Bulgaria OutPutative mother Sasha Ruseva with one of her children, whom she claims is albino, pose for photographers in town of Nikolaevo, Bulgaria, 24 October 2013. Bulgarian police interrogated a Roma couple that could be the biological parents of the blonde girl who had been found in a Roma ghetto in Greece and is known as Maria

The Bulgarian Interior Ministry said Ms. Ruseva claimed to have recognized the Greek Roma couple involved in the case as the people with whom she had left her daughter.

Prosecutors said they had charged her with “deliberately selling a child while residing out of the country.”

Maria was discovered last week when Greek police noticed she looked so unlike the couple — Christos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40 — who were looking after her.

They were arrested, but insisted they were acting “out of charity” and Maria’s mother gave her up voluntarily because she was unable to care for her.

Despite their plea, they were charged with child abduction, while Maria was placed in the care of a charity.

Thursday, Greek hospital birth records emerged showing Ms. Ruseva had given birth to a girl on Jan. 31, 2009, the same date given as Maria’s birthday by the Greek Roma couple.

Maria’s birth was never registered because Ms. Ruseva claimed she was unmarried and could not name the father.

However, authorities became suspicious because she presented identity documents that showed she was married and had two previous children with her husband.

Nikolay Doychinov / AFP / Getty ImagesTheir home in the Roma district of the central Bulgarian town of Nikolaevo

So deep are the cracks in Greece’s birth registration system it was “pure luck” Maria’s case was uncovered at all, said Konstantinos Tzanakoulis, mayor of Larissa, the provincial capital of the region where she was found.

The Smile of the Child via Getty ImagesA notice declaring that a four-year-old girl, reportedly named Maria, has been found living with a Roma couple in central Greece, on October 21, 2013 in Athens, Greece.

“Who knows how many such cases exist?” he asked, blaming a system that was riddled with loopholes.

Whether the girl was sold or given away is unclear. One neighbour said Ms. Ruseva claimed to have sold her for 500 leva ($370).

Whether Maria’s future would have been brighter in Greece or Bulgaria is hard to tell.

In Nikolaevo, 270 kilometres east of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, life is harsh and prospects for escape few. Scruffy children in ragged clothes roam outside, while inside the homes the plaster is peeling to reveal bare bricks.

Bulgaria is one of the poorest countries in Europe, with more than 80% of its households living below the official minimum income of 566 leva ($420) a month.

Meanwhile, Maria remains in the care of the Greek charity Smile of the Child.

“She is much better,” said Costas Giannopoulos, the charity’s head.

“Day after day, she is adapting to the new environment.”

Nikolay Doychinov / AFP / Getty ImagesFour of the children of Sasha Ruseva and Atanas Rusev

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Almost everyone has heard about Madeleine McCann, the British four-year-old snatched from her parents’ apartment in Portugal in 2007.

No trace of her has ever been found even though the investigation continues. But in a development that should give hope to all parents of missing children, there’s the case of “Maria” — the blonde, blue-eyed girl found last week during a drug bust in a Roma encampment in Greece.

Investigators became suspicious because the child looked nothing like the couple claiming to be her parents. Christos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou (or Selini Sali — she had ID in both names, with different ages) are Roma and dark-skinned.

DNA tests confirmed she was not related to them,and an examination of her her teeth suggested she was closer to six or seven than the four years old the couple claimed.

They said they had adopted her because her mother — an unknown Bulgarian woman — could not support her. Other reports say the mother, a prostitute, sold the child to the couple for 2,000 euros.

So who is she? The mystery has rekindled the hopes of thousands of parents whose children have disappeared — an astonishing number in this age of security cameras, cellphones, Amber alerts and instant communication.

The Smile of a Child charity that is looking after Maria says it has received about 8,000 calls and thousands of emails from people around the world.

A spokesman said about 10 cases of missing children were being considered “very seriously … They include children from the United States, Canada, Poland and France,” said Panagiotis Pardalis

Maria’s discovery throws the spotlight on the prevalence of child trafficking in Greece, says the BBC’s Giorgos Christides.

Criminal organizations bring hundreds of children from the Balkans to Greece, where they are subjected to forced labour, sex-trafficking or sold to couples, in Greece or abroad, in illegal adoption schemes.

“There are currently 3,000 children transited through Greece by child-trafficking rings. The children originate mainly from Bulgaria, Romania and other Balkan countries,” says Lambros Kanellopoulos, the president of the UN children’s agency UNICEF in Greece.

Mr. Kanellopoulos says Greece’s status as a trafficking hub can be attributed to two factors: its geographical location, and its ineffective prevention and prosecution procedures. “The system is full of holes,” he says.

They are now working on what they see is the strongest theory: that Maria may have been a child “left over” after police broke up child trafficking rings between 2008 and 2010. Those raids targeted Bulgarians coming into Greece to sell children into illegal adoptions – and because of the spotlight being shone on the trade, the child was left with the gipsy couple to look after.

Greece’s chaotic and ineffective bureaucracy doesn’t help.

Maria’s “parents,” for example, claimed to have 14 children, six of them born in less than 10 months. This is because parents can get a birth certificate merely by submitting a signed declaration supported by two other people, rather based on hospital records — and obviously open to fraud. The mother was also registered with three municipalities to receive welfare payments.

The Independent’s Memphis Baker warns against stigmatizing the Roma, one of Europe’s most disadvantaged groups.

The difficulty here is keeping things in perspective. Already the fact that Maria is blonde and white, inevitably a reminder of Madeleine McCann, has contributed to wall-to-wall coverage. Were it a Romanian child found in the Roma camp, this would not have been a story. And, for populations that interact with the Roma primarily in the form of street-beggars, or tabloid scaremongering, it takes a mental contortion to get a sense of life from their point of view. These are the facts. 90% of Roma in Europe live below the poverty line. They are shunted ceaselessly from place to place. Many say they can’t get jobs.

In a case that parallels that of Maria, Irish police removed a child from another Roma family, reports the Sunday World’s Mick McCaffrey.

Gardai received a tip-off from a member of the public that a six or seven year-old girl was living with a large Roma family but looked nothing like any of her supposed siblings.

Officers from the child protection unit attached to Tallaght station [south of Dublin] called to the home on Monday afternoon and spoke with two Roma adults.

There were a number of children in the house and one was a young girl who had blonde hair and striking blue eyes. She looked nothing like anybody else in the house but the adults maintained that the girl was their daughter.

The authorities have ordered DNA tests to establish whether the couple are the child’s biological parents.

About 20 Roma gathered outside Dublin’s family law court Tuesday while a hearing took place to establish a care order for the girl. This could see her remaining in care for up to 28 days while the situation is examined.

No arrests have been made and there is no allegation of abduction against the parents.

The family is originally from Romania, but has lived in Ireland for many years.

Suspicions were apparently raised because the girl is blond, with “striking blue eyes,” whereas every other family member had dark complexions.

Police have contacted Europol and Interpol for reports about missing children, while investigations continue in Ireland.

The case comes just days after a blond girl, believed to be aged five or six, who had been living with a Roma family in Farsala, Greece, was taken into care when DNA tests proved she was not their biological daughter.

Christos Salis, 39, and his wife Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, have been held on charges of abduction and document fraud.

Greek police are examining the possibility child traffickers had planned to sell the girl, known only as Maria, to a wealthy family, but placed her in a Roma camp as police moved in on them.

The couple at the centre of the case insist they took the girl into their care when her mother handed her over soon after the birth.

Greek police confirmed DNA tests have shown Maria cannot be any of the missing children on a list provided by Interpol.

They are now seeking help from anthropologists in an attempt to determine her likely origins based on her characteristics. Smile of The Child, the charity put in charge of Maria’s welfare, has said she will formally be put up for adoption in six months if her biological parents are not found.

ATHENS — A top Greek prosecutor on Tuesday ordered an emergency nationwide investigation into birth certificates issued in the past six years after a girl was discovered living with alleged abductors at a Roma camp.

Supreme Court prosecutor Efterpi Koutzamani ordered the inquiry for birth certificates issued after Jan. 1, 2008, amid news media reports of benefit fraud by families declaring births in multiple regions. Experts have used the case to point out the severe weaknesses in the country’s birth registration system.

A couple has been jailed on charges of abduction and document fraud in the case of the girl known only as “Maria.” The girl, referred to as the “blonde angel” by the Greek media, was taken into protective care last week after DNA tests established the couple was not her biological parents.

She’s believed to be five or six years old

The case has triggered international interest in missing children, with the girl’s DNA entered into a database held by the international law enforcement agency Interpol to check for matches.

On Monday, the mayor of Athens ordered the suspension of three officials in charge of record-keeping. New parents have three months to declare their newborns. Investigators in Athens found a large number of babies had been recently declared at or near the end of that deadline, sending up a red flag because they suspected some were multiple declarations to claim benefits.

The two suspects, aged 39 and 40, deny the abduction allegations, claiming they received the child from a destitute woman to bring up as their own.

Authorities allege the female suspect claimed to have given birth to six children in less than 10 months, while 10 of the 14 children the couple had registered as their own are unaccounted for.

Police say the two suspects received about 2,500 euros ($3,420) a month in subsidies from three different cities.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/22/greece-launches-emergency-nationwide-birth-certificate-probe-after-blond-angel-discovered-in-roma-camp/feed/0stdChristos Sali, right, and his wife Selini Sali, who were charged on October 21 in Greece with abducting a young girl dubbed the "blonde angel."Hellenic Police via Getty ImagesRoma couple charged with abducting blonde girl, despite claiming they took her in as an 'act of charity'http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/22/roma-couple-charged-with-abducting-blonde-girl-despite-claiming-they-took-her-in-as-an-act-of-charity/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/22/roma-couple-charged-with-abducting-blonde-girl-despite-claiming-they-took-her-in-as-an-act-of-charity/#commentsTue, 22 Oct 2013 05:42:21 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=379634

A Roma couple were formally charged Monday with abducting a blonde girl found living with them, despite claiming that they had taken her in as an “act of charity” because her natural mother could not look after her.

Greek police released photographs of Christos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, alongside the child, known only as Maria, as a magistrate remanded the pair in custody pending a full investigation.

Hellenic Police via Getty Images"Maria"

The photographs showed the stark difference in appearance between Maria and the couple that raised police suspicions during last week’s raid for weapons and drugs at the ramshackle settlement in Farsala, 200 miles north of Athens, where they lived.

A DNA test confirmed that Maria, referred to as the “blonde angel” by the Greek media, was no relation to the pair, leading to an international effort to find her identity.

In a closed hearing in Larissa, the capital of Thessaly province, the couple told a judge that they had taken the girl in when she was a few weeks old after she was brought to them by a third party who begged them to look after her.

They denied snatching her, and instead asked the court to trace a Bulgarian man whom they claimed had helped the child’s mother find a family to care for her. They told the court that their taking in the child had been an “act of charity”.

“There has been no kidnapping, no robbery, no trafficking,” Constantinos Katsavos, one of the lawyers representing Mr Salis, told reporters after the hearing.

“It was an adoption that was not exactly legal but it took place with the mother’s consent.”

Mr Salis provided the court with the name of the “Bulgarian Roma middleman” and his mobile phone number and urged the court to trace him so he could confirm the story.

It was an adoption that was not exactly legal

He also said that he could identify the mother, whom he described as a Bulgarian Roma speaker, and that she would confirm her consent if she could be found.

The couple appeared separately at the hearing, which lasted several hours.

Mr Salis, who was the first to be questioned by the judge, described how “at first they were reluctant to take her in but it seemed no one wanted the child so they said they would care for her,” a judicial source said.

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Despite their version of events, the couple were remanded in custody after being charged with child abduction. They were also charged with procuring false documentation. The charges carry a sentence of up to 20 years.

Police discovered that Ms Dimopoulou had two different identification documents and that she had registered 14 children in three different municipalities. Six of the children she claimed to be her own had their births registered within less than 10 months of each other.

The charity Smile of the Child, which is caring for Maria, who speaks the Roma dialect and a smattering of Greek, disclosed yesterday that medical tests had shown she was aged between five and six years old and not four, as claimed by Mr Salis and Ms Dimopolou.

It is one of several discrepancies that cast doubt on the legitimacy of the story told by the couple.

When first arrested, the pair gave various and contradictory accounts as to how Maria came to be in their care and a photograph of the blue-eyed blonde girl suggested her hair had previously been dyed a darker colour, perhaps to make her presence in the camp less conspicuous to outsiders. The case has raised questions about whether the child may have been stolen to order or if the couple formed part of a wider child-trafficking ring.

We as a community are being victimised over this

Connections were made immediately with the cases of high-profile missing children, including Madeleine McCann, who disappeared from an apartment in Portugal just before her fourth birthday in May 2007, and Ben Needham, the toddler who vanished from outside his grandparents’ home on the Greek island of Kos in 1991.

Smile of the Child has received thousands of inquiries about Maria, while the Greek media reported yesterday that her DNA was being compared with samples from people in several other countries. For the first time, police released details of items seized during the raid on the camp when Maria was discovered, including a haul of weapons and drugs, a range of chainsaws, balaclavas and stolen credit cards. Home video footage also emerged of a girl believed to be Maria dancing with members of the family when she was a toddler. Outside the courthouse, at least five dozen members of the Roma community where the arrests were made gathered in an apparent show of support for Mr Salis and Ms Dimopoulou. Among them were several barefoot children. The crowds were openly hostile when approached by media and claimed they were being stigmatised unfairly.

The Smile of the Child via Getty ImagesA notice declaring that a four-year-old girl, reportedly named Maria, has been found living with a Roma couple in central Greece, on October 21, 2013 in Athens, Greece.

“The truth is that this couple were looking after the child because the Bulgarians couldn’t. But instead we as a community are being victimised over this, accused of stealing children,” said Nikos Paiteris, the head of the Roma Association of Thessaly.

Greece’s justice minister confirmed in August that there were 40 individual cases of child trafficking under investigation. In recent years Greece has seen several high-profile cases in which pregnant Bulgarian women have been forced by gangs to cross the border to Greece to give birth and their babies sold to childless couples.

The Needham family yesterday questioned whether Maria’s case could shed light on a child trafficking culture in Greece, something they believe was not investigated properly at the time of Ben’s disappearance.

“We have always believed that Ben’s abduction was gipsy-related. We hope that the investigation into Ben’s disappearance will now be looked at again,” Kerry Needham, his mother, told ITV.